Oops she did it again…

Now I know that you all immediately thought of Britney Spears who was, and is, famous for that particular line, but no, it is simply myself not wanting to admit that “I” yet again managed to leave something behind. So I am choosing to use the more “royal” she to describe myself.

Over the years of renting my mountain flat and having computers, telephones and cameras – or any other instrument that needs to be charged up occasionally I have managed to basically forget in one place or the other a charger that was desperately needed in order for me to continue the life to which I have become accustomed.  You will perhaps not yet have forgotten last weekend’s trials with technology.

I did it again: that sinking feeling as I crossed the border back into Switzerland, having just driven an hour, that I didn’t bring my computer charger…

Now, we know that thanks to having left it behind in the mountains, I did have the one for my mini MacAir (which this time I took as well so that I could enter my landlord’s wifi code), but having to use only it would mean no work on photos and that is one of this week’s major goals. Unfortunately as with many other items, Apple changes its plugs with about every model so I couldn’t just use that one for the current MacbookPro. Sigh.

I checked my luggage at a stop – and sure enough – nothing. At least I caught it before I by-passed the store where I was sure to find a new one. A few francs lighter I now have a double of the battery charger. 

 

The good news? I don’t buy expensive shoes, nor clothes that often and tend to be rather good at not spending too much money, except when it comes to replacing and or acquiring doubles of anything to do with anything that needs to be plugged in!

I hate to think of it, but it could happen that at some point I might end up with doubles in one place and nothing in the other? Oh help, let’s not even go there. For the coming week (this is one of the few longer periods that I had available to be in the mountains of course) I have everything that I need. Long may this state of affairs last! And hey, it's not as bad as the time that I had left my passport in the mountains when I was flying to the USA two days later - that one did mean a round-trip and a lot of stress.

Magic or Misery?

Oh the trials when it comes to our tech lives.

Last week after no one could hear me when they called me on my cell phone, I took the plunge and got a “smart” phone.

Now the phone itself may be smart, but it’s current owner and user seems to be anything but. I couldn’t have the store turn it on as for the first time in my life I had purchased my day bus pass with the old one and didn’t want to risk a fine. As it turns out, in terms of time and nerves, that might have been the lesser risk!

That evening I called the local provider and turned it on, then had to wade through dozens of instructions and pages of possibilities in German before I could actually change the language to one that I use daily. So far, so good. Also changed the PIN so that I could have a fighting chance of remembering it.

The next day – Thurs. – was able in the morning to open it without any problems with the new PIN. Then I made the mistake of leaving. By mid-afternoon I had managed to block the SIM card and of course hadn’t taken the PUK with me so was essentially without a phone.

Never mind – Friday was able to send both sons an e-mail saying that I was out-of-range and I didn’t worry about the rest of the world.

I never did find any more wifi either so actually did end up being totally off the grid, so to speak, from Fri. morning until I returned Sun. evening. Perhaps not a choice, but once I accepted the facts I didn’t worry about it any more – just enjoyed and hoped that there would be no emergencies.

Then of course Sunday night did manage to unlock the phone, only to discover that I had left the battery charger in the mountain flat. Ah ha, but luck was on my side as still the same brand of telephone and the old charger actually worked. One hurdle down.  Second hurdle appeared right behind it though when my “new” computer wouldn’t turn on. Argh…

Monday thus became a day dedicated to getting all these techie things up and running again. First however, I had to learn why I wasn’t able to answer my phone. Son two – whom I was helping with his sublet – finally discovered that all sounds had been blocked. OK I now had a supposedly working telephone, but when I tried to answer a call by pushing on the green telephone nothing happened. Several very frustrating calls later we discovered that I had to swipe the green telephone, not push, tap or otherwise jiggle it. Progress being made.

After a delicious lunch at Little India – an Indian restaurant in the Pâquis area of Geneva that I can highly recommend – I headed to the Mac store to figure out my computer problems. Waiting time approx. 1 hour and a half, so headed to the phone shop to figure out why, oh why, I was getting a beeping every 10 minutes or so and why I couldn’t get my working e-mail entered.  Had just managed that wait and got some answers when my number was called at the Mac store.  That two turned out to be very minor – and fortunately my current working Mac is in good shape (o.k. so I left the battery charger for the mini Mac also in the mountains …).

Hurdle number three: buy another battery for my favorite camera as I kept running it dry (also figured out the why of that – was sometimes pushing the video button instead of the take-one-picture button – yikes where was my mind?).  In that store the salesman had a lot of trouble trying to locate in the computer a replacement, then couldn’t order it either so I was slightly relieved that I am not the only one having tech problems.

By the end of the day though – all was again well in my connected world – my computer opened on the first try this morning; my cell phone collects all my e-mails, doesn’t beep too often and I can even remember how to answer it; and I have a back-up (and charged) battery for my favorite camera.

Now just don’t let the electricity go down and deprive me of these marvels!

Just another reason

I love Switzerland.

Anyone who knows me well, and even most of the people with whom I only have a passing acquaintance, knows how attached I am to my computer! And by my computer I mean any one of the three that I currently possess: the old one that I need to sort and finally transfer to the new one and my travel one.

I do tend to arrive in the mountains without one part or the other – and one famous year when I was planning on being here over a week actually had to go purchase another mouse. Usually it’s the separate keyboard, but I can actually manage without that for a few days (it allows me to put the computer on top of the mini toaster so that the screen is at eye level but still type properly at elbow level (those of us who took typing lessons will know what I am talking about).

Yesterday though was the biggest of disasters when I realized that I had managed to get up here without the battery pack! For an old computer where the battery maybe holds an hour this was not going to be good – all the photo work that I needed to do, the e-mails, the blogs, etc. for perhaps a week.  E-mails I could eventually pick up if I installed all my programs into the new computer, which I have brought along for the second time in hopes of starting that famous transfer. However as all the passwords are on the old computer it would have meant a lot of boot it up for 5 minutes, find a password, turn off, transfer to new, etc. with no hopes of actually getting it all done.  I love walking, but there is a limit to the number of walks that one can take in any given day. My reading materials are meant to be supplementary for a week so even they were going to run out. What to do? Go buy yet another battery pack – that is if I could find one?

Then I remembered: I live in Switzerland!

Call home, spoke to my housemate and R, had them locate the one that I had lent to younger son when he lost his, and send it express mail yesterday in the hopes that it would at least get here tomorrow whilst I was out taking my train ride so that come Thursday I could “work” again.

Bless my housemates, bless the mostly-efficient Swiss postal service – by express sent last night around 18:00 it arrived here in the mountains at 9:00!

Yes I’ll still go take a walk, but my life as I know it has just been immeasurably improved by this seemingly small proof of a system that on the whole works and works well.

Most women buy shoes…

But we each have our own weaknesses and mine just doesn’t happen to be shoes – mind you my husband loved anything leather so I had to convince him not to buy me more shoes, purses, etc. and perhaps that is where my taste for shoes got lost. However, I suspect it was non-existent to start with as I never was as interested in fashion as my younger sister: if it fit and didn’t get in the way of my activities that was good enough: having to get dressed up to go into town as a child was not my cup of tea so was glad that it didn’t happen very often.

But, as I was saying, we all have our own particular stumbling blocks when it comes to the accumulation of things – mine happens to be cameras and computers.

And recently I gave in to the craving – my most recent camera got accidentally dropped on concrete and forever after read “the objective is not correctly positioned” – refusing to open at all. As I was leaving on my Italian trip in two days, a new one (mind you the second-oldest one still worked – the one where the telephoto lens isn’t adequate for my purposes) was obviously mandatory: as my little sister was want to say: “that’s my story and I’m sticking to it”!

I had originally intended simply replacing it with the newest of the same, a Canon, as have always found them to be perfect for me. But in the local department store’s electronics corner and faced with a choice in between a Canon or the Lumix (Panasonic) with a Leica lens, I wavered and promptly was unfaithful to Canon. And, as the saying goes, never looked back – the telephoto lens is wonderful and the IS (image stabilization for those unused to the term) certainly improves the blur even if my hands are no longer the steadiest. It’s macro is also more than adequate, witness recent flower photos.

Then there was the computer: to my credit I have been talking about a new computer for approx. two years – well before I finally relinquished the “client”. In fact they were the reason I didn’t act on it sooner as really, really, really, didn’t want to have to “translate” my earlier software programs, statistics, data basing and book keeping into newer versions that may or may not have worked. I got burned when I installed a newer OS then had to strip it back out the next day when it was incompatible with the two programs that I used the most.

But the day of my “retirement” finally came – I waiting patiently yet a few months to make sure that I could answer all remaining questions, then I headed to the Mac (not to divulge my preferences) store.  They convinced me that my computer was actually working just fine but that perhaps to speed it up a bit I should exchange my memory cards for more powerful ones. They, of course, couldn’t do that.  Well I did actually plan on doing that, but the store that could do is located in a very difficult-to-access-by-car part of town, I was busy with the bath renovations then with social events so nothing happened except that I got more and more frustrated about the slowness of my computer – never mind having to sort out trash bins in all my software to keep it moving at all (sorting out all the stuff stored on it was such a herculean task that I wasn’t even going there).

Then, oh wonder of wonders, the local department store not only had a sale on Mac’s but this also fell during a period of 10% off if you used the store card. That did it. Sorry Apple but your store lost a sale. Now I must decide what gets transferred into the new one, what remains on the old and how I transfer in between them (the old screen is 17” which of course is much better for my photo work than the new 15” – and no, you computer geeks, don’t remind me that I can simply hook it up to my TV screen – that would involve buying adequate table and chair arrangements for the chalet!)

MacBook Pro

So, although shoes and clothes might not be this particular woman’s preference, I certainly have proved that my little hobbies aren’t quite inexpensive either!

Off the grid - an experiment

Of course, right at the very beginning I have to admit that I wasn’t really “off the grid” as I did still have and use my cell phone, my e-mails and internet. I just left out one composant thereof: Facebook.

I have travelled before where I only checked e-mails once a day, one famous trip my housemate and myself both decided to not even take our computers: and were actually pretty good – only checking e-mails 4 times in hotels that had a computer for public use. However, that is not my usual life as even supposedly “retired” I find myself spending a great deal of time seated in front of said computer (e-mails, Facebook, book keeping, the client-from-whom-I-resigned but have not yet been able to turn over all the information to my replacement, blogging, working on my photos and (most precious of all) keeping in touch with family via Skype.

However, I realized that I was becoming addicted to Facebook. As it is one of the tabs that is permanently up (Facebook, the client’s data base, Blogger, Earthquake information - that one went up when my younger son was in Peru – Fitbit, Jacquie Lawson’s card, Apple comparison chart – need a new computer eventually – whatever topic I did research on last and – must I admit it – at least three computer games), it was all to easy to consult it every half hour or so, especially when the messages popped up that so and so had posted or like or in any other way inter-acted on FB. Most people at least have the possibility of checking at one point in the day and seeing most of what their family and friends have posted in one fell swoop: I living in a different time zone from many of my friends and family, can happily check at any time of the day – or my night – and still see new postings.  I said to myself, enough is enough; can I do it? Can I actually consciously turn off Facebook for a week?

I took the plunge last Sunday (Saturday still needed to interact with I-forget-whom, which shows you how important that was.) I am sure of two things: one, no one probably remarked my non-presence during that week (o.k. I warned my sister) and two, am much less stressed having not spent the week trying to think of ways to convince the world at large that my way of thinking is the correct way: sometimes you just can’t reason with some people.

I would add a third thing: maybe most of my presence was just that – a presence to show that I exist – we humans are certainly egotistical beings: I post therefore I am could be the new motto for many of us.

Did I even miss it? Not really – the main reason I joined all those years ago was to kind of keep in touch with my son’s lives – and neither posts more than a handful of times per year. Also, I have to confess that the bloggers that I follow land conveniently in my e-mail inbox so didn’t have to do without them.

I know that a week from now I will probably be as involved as ever, but am going to try and cut down a bit – perhaps checking only every hour – and maybe I’ll take the real plunge and unhook one whole day a week: which shall it be? While I’m at it, I am also going to close several of those always-open-tabs. If I need (and this will be my decision as to the necessity: I mean, really, sometimes one just has to know what the current status of earthquakes is, right?). If I want the knowledge I can always re-open the tab.

Technology, paranoia or

How I can totally mess up my life all by myself.

Now I don’t consider myself without some computer skills: in fact there was a point in time where I believed myself to be the only person capable in all of Switzerland of printing out a sheet of addresses with the bottom of the page filled as well.

Still, I just as often forget how our lives have been changed (improved is debatable although I absolutely LOVE being able to skype with distant family and friends and enjoy keeping up with those even-more-distant cousins, kissing cousins and assorted friends and acquaintances who do not live next door on Facebook).

Every once in awhile I get on a “let’s take my life out of the path of the hackers, phishers, scammers etc.”  Now if for a while things are cleaner in my computer it always causes chaos – why can’t I seem to remember and prepare for this?

So yesterday, in what I can only label as a fit of stupidity, having read (ad nauseum) any and all articles about Heart Bleed then reading another article in of my favorite women’s magazines about web security I decided to change the settings on my browser…

Now I’ve done this before and usually just have to remember (out of the meanderings of my brain) various passwords, etc. and that usually only takes less than a half-hour.

However, and it’s a big one, I had obviously not done this in the past year: if my most used sites were no problem (I had emptied the cache and taken out all but a handful of cookies: how did I miss leaving the one for my blog?), my blog had disappeared.

Two hours later and I had managed to “find” it again, but it was a very intense two hours, during which I discovered that I have at least one other Google account and probably a third as well.  At 9 p.m. I did consider ditching the one that wasn’t used… but thought better of it as who knows whether or not it is linked to the account through which I access my blog?

Not only is my life probably not worth worrying about any one’s scrutiny, but also what do I have to hide in my computer? Egotism is thy name.  After all, in spite of Facta documents which state that one has to declare any account over $50’000 on one’s FBAR I declare even the $350 on my PayPal account so the IRS is not a threat, beyond the obvious one of them taking my money.  The NSA shouldn’t be a threat either, as to my knowledge (but what do I know these days? I have even heard that certain seemingly innocuous words can get one flagged) I have never done anything wrong (o.k. speeding tickets don’t count do they?) nor – again to my knowledge (why won’t criminals all wear an overcoat and look suspicious – it sure would make life easier) have I frequented any spies or the like.  My life really isn’t interesting to anyone except my two sons (or at least I hope that they ARE interested), my family, a handful of very good friends and the odd reader of my blogs (see you are important!).

So I’ll try and let the paranoia rest, leave my important web-sites up; no longer ditch the history when I shut the browser, etc. in the hopes that I can continue to write my blogs; check out doings on Facebook; play computer games; and – this is probably the most important reason for going on line of the lot – be able to pay my bills by e-banking.

Remind me of this when I complain in six months that I have yet again done the same and spent a frustrating day getting myself re-connected.